Jellyfish basher

PALM BEACH, FL — I think that we had just passed The Breakers, my friend and I, walking down the beach, discussing the state of the media, how the tragedy of amendment two came about, our careers, her wardrobe and my hair, when we came across a beached jelly fish with a rock on top of it.

“How did it get under a rock?” we wondered, and strolled on, I think at that point debating the wisdom of my going to another friend’s haircutter.

A lot of jellyfish had gotten beached that day, as the tide was going out, and still more bobbed along in the shallow water, making me glad I had come just to walk.

Between semi-treated sewage, sharks, stingrays, jellyfish, near-shore rocks and pieces of cruise ship garbage, I don’t swim in the ocean much anymore. One time I found a hypodermic syringe on the beach and considered not walking on the beach anymore — in fact joined a gym and walked on a treadmill instead for a while, but decided watching Fox news and listening to a sexagenarian weightlifter emit labor-like grunts was worse than stepping on a hypodermic needle of unknown origin.

Then one time recently, you will recall, I impaled my foot on a spike sticking out of the sand, as I strolled a length of essentially private beach further south in this town.

So I learned to look at where I’m putting my feet more when I walk, and was enjoying the benefit of that lesson now, as I stepped around jellyfish instead of on them, which I can’t imagine how that would feel, or how long it would take to forget how it felt.

I do know now, however, what it sounds like when a heavy rock drops on a beached jellyfish — a nasty combination of “chunk” and “splat” — because the middle-aged man in knee-length swimming trunks, a tropical print shirt and a straw hat, caused exactly that to happen about 20 feet or so ahead of us. I don’t know if he did it by throwing the rock down hard, or just standing over the jellyfish and dropping it, because I was watching where I was putting my feet.

But I do know when we looked over at where the sound had happened, he was standing there looking down, perhaps proudly or at least victoriously, at the jellyfish under the rock in front of him.

We must have made a sound too, because he looked over and explained, “to keep it from going back in the water.” Then he moved on, but stopped to look back at us, or the conquered jellyfish, or both, standing still at the water’s edge, looking over his shoulder, as if something bothered him.

We tried, but couldn’t go on — to risk an encounter with him, perhaps a further explanation, perhaps a rock (to make sure we didn’t go into the water either), certainly more rock-bashed jellyfish — so we turned back, and after a few minutes of recovery returned to discussing the state of the media, how the tragedy of amendment two came about, my hair, and other things I don’t understand.